Tag: blueborne

Billions of mobile, desktop and IoT devices that use Bluetooth may be exposed to a new remote attack, even without any user interaction and pairing. The unique condition for BlueBorne attacks is that targeted devices must have Bluetooth enabled.

The new attack technique, dubbed BlueBorne, was devised by experts with Armis Labs. Researchers have discovered a total of eight vulnerabilities in the Bluetooth design that expose devices to cyber attacks.

Security researchers have just discovered total 8 zero-day vulnerabilities in Bluetooth protocol that impact more than 5.3 Billion devices—from Android, iOS, Windows and Linux to the Internet of things (IoT) devices—using the short-range wireless communication technology.

Using these vulnerabilities, security researchers at IoT security firm Armis have devised an attack, dubbed BlueBorne, which could allow attackers to completely take over Bluetooth-enabled devices, spread malware, or even establish a “man-in-the-middle” connection to gain access to devices’ critical data and networks without requiring any victim interaction.

BlueBorne: Wormable Bluetooth Attack

The BlueBorne attack could spread like the wormable WannaCry ransomware that emerged earlier this year and wrecked havoc by disrupting large companies and organisations worldwide.

Ben Seri, head of research team at Armis Labs, claims that during an experiment in the lab, his team was able to create a botnet network and install ransomware using the BlueBorne attack.

The researchers have discovered information disclosure and code execution flaws in Linux, four code execution, MitM and information disclosure vulnerabilities in Android (CVE-2017-0781, CVE-2017-0782, CVE-2017-0783 and CVE-2017-0785), one vulnerability that allows MitM attacks in Windows (CVE-2017-8628) and one code execution flaw in the Bluetooth Low Energy Audio protocol used by iOS.

Armis demonstrated that it is also possible for an attacker to exploit one BlueBorne vulnerability to launch MitM attacks against Windows machines and hijack the victim’s browsing session to a phishing website.

In the following video, a hacker can exploit the BlueBorne flaw to take over a Samsung smartwatch running the Tizen OS.

The security firm responsibly disclosed the vulnerabilities to all the major affected companies a few months ago—including Google, Apple and Microsoft, Samsung and Linux Foundation.